Goodnight
by ErinElectricity
Summary: This takes place ten years after the final battle at Hogwarts between Harry and Voldemort. This story is about the day, ten years exactly, since Fred was killed, and how George reacted. Enjoy.


George Weasley allowed a sigh to escape his lips. He turned the key in the creaky lock, switching the sign on the door to "Closed." The street outside was dark and quiet, interrupted only by the occasional stumbling drunk from the Hog's Head down the street.

George turned away from the street, his prematurely lined face pulled into a forced look of content. The store behind him was empty, he was sure, but he thought he felt something, gentle as a summer's breeze, pass by his left shoulder.

He pushed the thought out of his mind. There was no breeze; the air inside the store was still and stuffy, causing him to perspire slightly. He walked through a fake plastic archway and slowly made his way to the back of the store, where his office and the ladder up to his home awaited.  
As George walked briskly down an aisle, he glanced sideways at the shelves on either side of him. They were packed full of merchandise – no doubt Ron, his younger brother, had restocked before whisking home to his wife and children – bearing the name "Weasley's Wizard Wheezes" in bold scarlet letters. He closed his eyes tightly. It had been ten years, to the day, that his other half had so cruelly been taken away from him…

He tried not to linger on the thought, but found it much more difficult than it had been recently. Not that it was easy in the first place, oh no, but now it had become nearly impossible to banish the image from his mind…

George felt weak. His twin Fred's beaming smile stuck firmly in his mind's eye, refusing to falter. George buried his face in his hands, holding back the cry of agony that was so intent on escaping.

Fred was letting off fireworks in his mind. Now, they were both demonstrating their Skiving Snackboxes in their seventh year at Hogwarts, up in the Gryffindor common room. The scene changed again as they both hit Bludgers towards the Slytherin Seeker in a memorable game of Quidditch at school. Their home Quidditch practices. Christmases. Their birthdays. The funeral.

George let a silent sob break through, thoroughly unaware that some invisible being was watching him, its face too now being covered in tears.

George sat on the rickety stool behind the cashier's desk, staring blankly into space. His face seemed aged well past his twenty-nine years, and a few gray hairs were becoming visible in his vividly red mop of hair. But his eyes had aged the most; the majority of the time now, they were dull and listless, whereas, before Fred's death – he choked back a sob at the thought – they had been constantly smiling, revealing the presence of the sly pranks he and his twin had been planning. He was much thinner than he had been then, and nearly all of the color had permanently drained from his face.

George was no longer the happy young wizard he had once been a decade ago, eager to start a joke shop with his twin, Fred, and make a few Galleons while enjoying himself. Now, the shop seemed a burden, and every time he looked at it, he thought of that day. Sure, his younger brother, Ron, had come to help out, but he and George had none of the spark, none of the connection that the Weasley twins had those many years before.

George was barely aware that Ron and his wife, Hermione, were standing in the front of the store, concerned looks commanding both of their faces. Ron opened his mouth to say something to his older brother, but Hermione caught his eye and shook her head, and he closed it immediately.

To George, the joke shop was empty. All of the aisles, stacked high with their products, all of the displays and posters and pictures and shelves, all of the material things in Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, had been removed, though they were still there. Ron and Hermione were gone, thought they still stood silently near the Pygmy Puff cage. All that remained was the shell of a man, himself; left without the one thing that had made him feel whole.

A part of him had died that day with Fred. Most of him would be a more correct term, however. Not a day went by that he hadn't wished that it had been he who was killed rather than his brother, that Fred had been spared while George was killed by a curse from a Death Eater on the night that Voldemort was killed in Hogwarts.

Yet, despite all of that, he would never wish his life, his misery, on his twin. He never wished it on anyone, but to be half of a dynamic duo missing the finishing, most important piece, it was devastating. Every so often, he wished he were dead as well; that both he and Fred had been killed, together until their very last moment of life, a united force against the Death Eaters, on that night.

Ron and Hermione left as silently as they could, cringing as the bell over the door tinkled lightly.  
But George, lost in his own thoughts, hadn't noticed. He was already climbing the ladder to the home he had once shared with Fred, summoning all of his self-control to not to just let go when he reached the top, to fall to his death and leave this all behind.

He stumbled to his bed, the tears streaming down his face uninhibited now, as he tried to navigate blindly through the dark room. At last, he found the bed, covered in the hand-knitted blankets his mother, Molly, had made the twins when they were much younger and crawled underneath them without changing into his nightclothes.

The cool breeze gently touched his face again, though the windows were all shut. George closed his eyes, seeking peace, and seeing Fred's face beaming back at him from the back of his eyelids.

George's eyes were suddenly open, scanning in front of him. He could've sworn that Fred had actually been with him, in this room, ten years after his death. Shaking slightly, he brushed off the thought and closed his eyes.

His eyes shot open again, knowing for a fact that Fred was in the room with him. But how was that possible? He was dead; George had clutched his lifeless body to his chest after seeing him in the Great Hall that day, sobbing into his red hair for what seemed like days. George had dug the grave himself, without magic; how could he be in this room, alive, after a decade?

George sighed again. He knew that Fred was dead. His mind, desperate for contact with his brother after all this time, was playing tricks on him.

"Goodnight," he said softly to the picture of himself and Fred holding up the sign to Weasley's Wizard Wheezes on his bedside table, turning over and falling asleep after a few moments.

The invisible figure floated just above George's bed, and when he was sure he had fallen asleep, reached out a ghostly hand to stroke his brother's graying red hair.

"Goodnight," whispered Fred, letting a single tear slide down his cheek before disappearing into the darkness of the night.


End file.
